The best note taking app for the iPad is the one with the features you need for the task or context at hand.

I agree that Notability is best at audio mapped to handwritten or typed notes, but I rarely need that feature. Notability's drawing tools don't shine for me, so it sits unused most of the time.

The best app for my digital planner is Noteshelf, as its drawing tools are miles ahead of the competition. I like to draw and paint in-app, and in Noteshelf I have the option of a pencil, and I can use the highlighter to layer colour and achieve more intensity.

When I'm teaching over Zoom, the best app for the way I work is GoodNotes.

Number one step in choosing the "best app": know what you need! Step two: know what's out there.

Lately I’ve been contemplating minimalism, especially in my digital planning workflow, and in the way my devices (iPhone X, iPad Pro 12.9″, MacBook Pro 15 ″) are set up.

I agree with Joshua Becker’s definition of minimalism:

It is the intentional promotion of the things we most value by removing anything that distracts us from it.

This will look different when you apply it to the way it works for me, and I think that’s the point!

Minimalist, please—hold the fluff

Interactive digital planners have taken off in a big way since the iPad gained the beautiful Apple Pencil and notetaking apps learned how…

I’ve gathered these simple tips over thirty years of being a work-from-home graphic designer, educational publisher, and mother.

Some I’ve learned for myself via trial and error, others I’ve discovered and curated from people I admire.

Some of them free my brain to tackle the things I value more than the distraction that inevitably comes when I let them slip, others let me chip away at larger goals without setting aside extra time.

I hope you’ll find at least one that will make a difference for you, too.

Before we begin, remember:

There’s no point using squeezing a productivity hack…

The best way to pick up the cadence of a new language and learn to think and speak like a native is to be unconsciously exposed to it every day, in context, from birth. The next best way is to consciously do the very same thing, as often as you can.

Here’s how:

1. Listen to the radio in your target language. Have it playing in the background while you go about daily chores.

2. Read and listen (preferably at the same time) to a familiar text, with both your native and target languages side by side.

What you consistently…

There I was, in the middle of a shopping centre, completely invisible to the man next to me. I mean, I must have been invisible, right? Why else would he be talking so openly on the phone about personal matters, with me right there?

We were both sitting on one of a cluster of seats in the shopping centre, the stranger and I, each in our own bubble of cares. I was writing in a notebook, waiting for my daughter to finish shopping, while he was having an in-depth telephone conversation.

At first it was as if I was alone…

It was early December and night was falling when I decided that, at seven years old, my first-born daughter was ready to learn the truth. After all, isn’t that what we’re supposed to model for our kids? Telling the truth?

“Many, many years ago,” I began, “there lived a kindly old man named Nicholas. He had plenty of money, but he did not want to keep it all to himself. Nicholas looked around him, and when he saw people who were suffering, he would creep up to their windows and drop some money inside their homes.”

She watched me tell…

Sometimes, when I stop thinking
only of myself,
I see these thoughts
In your downcast eyes:

Stop being right all the time, even when you are.
Please listen to more than what you hear me say.
I bleed when you pick and pull at every word
until my ideas fall apart.

You spoke of wisdom from your past,
that if one doesn’t think
they’ll finish what they start
they shouldn’t attempt the thing at all.

Yes with building a house, I said,
but no with doing exercises.
Any movement is good,
even if we don’t complete the whole routine.

You…